Last week more than two dozen men graduated from the re-entry program at the new Orleans Parish correctional complex in New Orleans.

Alfred Baptiste, this year's class valedictorian, said what he learned during his time with the program was life-changing.

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"It's a benefit for the community and for the young men in this program," said Baptiste, a convicted drug offender.

The program is a partnership with the Louisiana Department of Corrections and provides -- among other things -- job training, money management, social etiquette and skilled labor classes for inmates who have served their time and are nearing their release from jail.

Any state inmate from Orleans, Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes are eligible to apply for the re-entry program.

"We think this is the bright light for them. (It's) the beginning of changing their lives to be productive citizens," Chief Deputy Jerry Ursin said.

But not everyone is as enthusiastic about the re-entry program.

"We just need to end the program altogether," said Stacy Head, New Orleans city councilwoman.

Head has been conducting an independent investigation into the re-entry program and so has the WDSU investigative team. What we have uncovered has Head and others questioning what's going on.

The enabling legislation that created re-entry programs in Louisiana bars those convicted of sex crimes from taking part at least in some similar programs.

"We don't take in all sex offenders. We've had maybe 10 since the program started," Ursin said.

Here's why the Sheriff's Office does that:

While the legislation says anyone convicted of a "crime of violence" is ineligible for most re-entry programs, it allows them into the OPSO's.

Cedric Davis, 36, is one of those inmates who recently completed the re-entry course. Court records show that in 1999 he pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree murder and armed robbery.

Both charges are considered crimes of violence, yet Davis was still allowed in.

"We learn to re-enter society," said Davis about the program.

OPSO said it's not violating any laws by admitting inmates like Davis and some sex offenders. A DOC department regulation policy drafted in 2010, seven years after the legislation became law, clears the way for violent offenders and sex offenders to take up slots in certain re-entry programs like the one in Orleans Parish while they're barred from many other programs around the state.

Ursin disagrees with people who are critical of the process.

"When you look at the DOC population, the overwhelming majority are crimes against people -- violent crimes -- and they are going out in the community. This gives them a fresh start," Ursin said.

"There are questions about the quality of the program," Head said.

Head said the biggest question has to do with the release dates for those being selected. Our investigation confirmed that for some of the inmates who complete the program, re-entry is still a long ways off.

The DOC said some inmates are actually transferred back to state-run prisons like Davis Wade, Winn and Hunt -- in some cases -- for months.

"The trajectory of the program is suppose to be: you do hard time, go into re-entry in your familiar community and then go out into that community. If you are doing a loop, it defeats a large part of the program and what it's out there for," Head said.

"So these folks are going through whatever the program looks like but are then returning to the environment that they came from. That's not re-entry," said Norris Henderson, who runs the group Voice of the Ex-Offender.

Henderson, a former wrongfully convicted inmate, has been critical of the Orleans Parish Prison.

"So all of a sudden you skill a guy up on how to interact, especially with females, and he's sent back for another year. What value are the skills you gave him?" Henderson said.

"Do some go back to DOC? Absolutely, but I think when they return to DOC they classify them and put them in a different atmosphere so they hone in on those skills and I don't think they are lost," Ursin said.

While the DOC and various grants fund the re-entry program, Heads said state inmates brought in for the program use bed space that should go toward local pre-trial detainees, in a jail she said is starved for space. Right now the city is paying jails in north Louisiana to house New Orleans men awaiting trials or sentencing.

"We are largely (and) blindly throwing money at something that has been told to us is a good idea," Head said.

That's why Head, a Democrat, wants it shut down -- at least temporarily.

"I think the best thing right now it to end the program entirely, send all the prisoners back to state facilities and then if the sheriff wants to make a case for starting the program again we make sure it's put together in a way that we don't have any of the problems of the past," Head said.

Inmates like Davis, convicted of attempted murder, disagree.

"You want to have the resources to rely on to provide for your family (and) help the community," Davis said.

The program is Orleans Parish has an 83 percent graduation rate and 1,400 graduates since it was launched.